Week 33

Subject: Sick and tired of being sick and tired…

Hi!

So, the weather warmed up a bit early last week and the temperatures got up to about 10C every day, but we're back to a cold snap. It was -12 degrees Celsius this morning and the frost was still thick at noon. It's amazing! It's November! We were looking at a globe yesterday with a few new members at a family´s house yesterday. I was amazed at how high up Sweden was. I'm on top of the world! Ok, that's terrible...But, it's good to look at a globe every now and then so you can remember how ridiculously out of proportion maps on paper are. Speaking of terrible, my friend, Reid, told me once that I would listen to and enjoy EFY-type music because that's all you've got. I never thought it possible. My fears became reality this week when listening to Michael McLean's song, 'Sick and Tired' from his Mission2BeHappy CD (it's on a sampler we have in the apartment), a rock-a-billy tribute to feeling old and out of shape, and actually thinking to myself, 'Ok, maybe this is alright. It's kind of catchy...' Oh dear. I blame Sis Porkka.

Anyway, this week was long. I don't feel like we did very much. We are going down in people we teach, but can't seem to fill in the gaps yet. We've also been spending a lot of time with A, who still doesn't want to be baptized, but basically wants to be a missionary. We've tried to explain to him he's too old, not baptized, and doesn't even believe in our message... It's very strange. He wants to do something, but won't even come to church! We're going to have to have a serious DTR (define the relationship) this week.

Yesterday was Sis Porkka's birthday, so I made her a freezer cheesecake. She wanted regular cheesecake, but I didn't get the recipe until yesterday. So I'll have to make that some other time. I made her a big sign out of an old sheet which also doubles as a door to our closet now. Door for your birthday! She was excited :) And we put up Christmas lights. It was great :) We then had a surprise dinner with the Svenssons after church and it was lovely. We sang to her in three languages, English, Swedish and Finnish because their son served a mission in Finnish and taught us all. We finished off the day tracting. Hooray!

Well, the elders are here, and we have to go roast sausages over a fire :) We got up this morning and collected wood from the woods and took it back to apartment to melt and dry off. Actually, we took it from huge piles of wood by our apartment building that have been there since I got here. Probably for public use, right? I've heard so many stories from Elders about them getting yelled at for doing un-socially acceptable things that I expected someone to come out of no where and give us a hard time. Nope! It was great. I'll tell you how it went next week if I remember :) Oh! RR set a baptismal date! She is absolutely fantastic!!! Have a great week everyone! Love you all.

Syster Maxwell